Amaranth's Garden, Page 4

  Before Mr. Glyn's departure, all his legal business had virtually left him, so there was little for his wife to arrange, with Matthew Gummer's help, beyond giving up the dingy offices so long associated with the family profession. These have now been taken by the prosperous Mr. Fleming, whose name shines resplendent on an imposing plate.

  This gentleman's proposal to take Matthew Gummer as second clerk at first met with a dignified refusal, loyalty to the name of Glyn forbidding any such notion to Matthew Gummer. As time went on, however, it became evident to the young man that to gradually part with his modest furniture offered no sure and certain provision for the future, and the appetites of his grandparents remained unchanged by the fluctuations of his fortunes.

  Behold him now, therefore, foregoing sentiment at the voice of duty, occupying a stool in the newly-papered and decorated offices, at a substantially increased salary, which would seem to bring him nearer to his dream of sheltering Amaranth against a buffet with the world, did not old Mr. Gummer require so much diet of a light and nourishing nature, and did not the old lady occasionally take it into her head to wash up the crockery and give the house a clean-down, which naturally results in the breakage and destruction of those articles needing most to be replaced.

  Still, Matthew Gummer receives his weekly wage with a thrill of consciousness that the world is smiling upon him. He only wishes he could be equally satisfied as to the lot of his patron and the rest of the family, concerning whom he knows only that no news has come to Amaranth of either father or mother, and that after spending a great deal of money in advertisements and going from agent to agent, she has obtained employment some hours every week in a neighbouring college and a private family.

  Bryantwood remembers Stephen Glyn to speak of him now only with a shake of the head. The £500 was repaid to the Church Fund, and the Forest Moor Church is arising now among the trees. But the story of the sudden disappearance has leaked out, and a shadow hangs, dark and mysterious, over the name of Glyn. The rector speaks of the force of sudden temptation, and Miss Jane Grimwood hopes it will be a lesson to all young men not to run bills, or write books, or marry indiscreetly, for had Stephen Glyn taken time and looked about him, there were others in the neighbourhood who might have turned out better managers than his unfortunate choice.

  The name of Stephen Glyn points a moral to little boys who play truant from school, and catch butterflies; and the young lady pupils at The Bower are conscious, as they tread the paths, of a virtuous superiority to the late occupants, who -- or at least one of them -- "came very near being locked up."

  But there are three in Bryantwood who still champion the cause of the Glyns, and will hear no word against them. These are Matthew Gummer, who carries in his pocket book sprigs of sweetbriar purloined from The Bower grounds by stealth; and Ardyn, who chiefly affects solitude at this time, and walks in the forest, moodily listening to the nightingale, and composes a great deal of poetry about Dead Sea fruit, and dust, and ashes, and vanity of vanities, and withered leaves; and poor Mrs. Bigham, who, on her couch of weakness, is doing more than all for the wanderers -- lifting holy hands in prayer day by day for the girl who has gone forth to face the world, and for the parents of whom no trace is known.

  At first Amaranth told Eddie every day, "We are sure to hear from Mother tomorrow." Then, as the sickening suspense began to pale the little boy’s cheek, she told him that Mother and Father, instead of writing, would certainly take them by surprise one day. Little Eddie, yearning in vain for the anticipated seaside and for his country home, is patient and happy with his "Early Reader," and box of paints, and the living pets to which tidy Mrs. Banks submits with a grumble.

  Mrs. Banks has told Eddie his sister has "quite enough on her mind to worry her," and his little brain tells him she must be fretting, as he is, for Mother; so he devotes himself to cheering her up as much as possible, and makes piece after piece of wool-work to surprise and delight her, and to brighten up their lodgings. As yet he has seen no London physician. Mrs. Banks says, "Send him to the hospital," but Amaranth shrinks with a little pride from this resource. She is painting pictures for sale, and she tells herself she will be able by-and-by to afford for her brother the best advice.

  The daily care, the stress of love for Eddie, the boy's recurring needs, and his caresses, probably stand just now between Amaranth and despair. With a cold, sickening desolation of heart, she has ceased now to expect news of her parents, though the sight of a postman or telegraph boy will sometimes cause a burning heartthrob of pain. Her one thought is how to earn enough for Eddie's livelihood and her own.

  At the college she gets a pound a week, and ten shillings for the four hours from the Blythes in Donegal Square. Mrs. Banks charges her only seven-and-sixpence weekly; but there are food, lights, firing, and clothes to be obtained; and Eddie's appetite is so delicate that Amaranth feels constrained to tempt him by better food than she allows herself. And the cod-liver oil he has taken for years is another item for her consideration.

  Amaranth begins, as never before, to understand the value of money. She looks twice now at a sixpence, and continually carries about in her mind the waiting repairs of boots, or the need of new stockings or flannel trousers for Eddie. One good result of her changed circumstances already is that she is gradually learning thrift; another evident result is the fact that when not painting she is always plying her needle -- a too rare event with Amaranth in the days gone by. But her life is so full of thought, of work, of strivings, and anxiety, that she has wholly ceased to pray. At first she only neglected her customary prayers; then the idea of worship in church seemed forgotten and set aside.

  Ardyn day by day is feeling as if, even near to the Master, he cannot endure the trouble that has fallen on him. It will take months and years to show him -- but Ardyn will understand, by means of this very furnace of trouble -- that he can bear and do all if only the presence of the Lord is with him. And Amaranth, fighting her way, struggling on, unbelieving and alone, determined to meet the changes of life with an obstinate refusal to utter one cry of appeal to the God who has wrecked her life -- must it not surely come to pass that Amaranth will prove she cannot live alone, cannot meet what the days have to bring, while her immortal soul struggles back from the clasp of God?

  After many ineffectual endeavours she has found a market for Christmas and New Year cards, and for little hand painted views to stand on table easels. But how far she seems from obtaining any step on the ladder even of skill, to say nothing of the niche which Eddie confidently predicts for her in the temple of Fame!

  As a child, Amaranth had dreamed sometimes of becoming a great artist. Could she but know it, necessity has turned her feet in the road that has only seemed a vision. She has started hard, earnest work, and for Eddie's sake is keeping at it.

  Amaranth attends an evening art school that is helping her to understand much more of the skills of her vocation. She sits next to a girl somewhat older than herself, with a grave, earnest face, and worn, shabby clothes. May Burr is always hard at work. She seems to shun the chatterers who abound here as elsewhere, and to absorb herself in her studies. Amaranth is interested in her, for she hears that May is the eldest of a large family, and supporting herself now by a scholarship. She has a little studio close to the Banks' house, and Amaranth's interest rises to reverence when she finds May Burr has actually had one picture exhibited in the Royal Academy.

  Many of the students speak of summer pleasures and tours, but May Burr is still busy in her studio. The two girls meet here and there so often that a nodding acquaintance changes into a frequent mutual cup of tea, and Amaranth gets many a word of help and cheer from this seemingly tireless girl with the serious grey eyes.

  Eddie and she soon get to know all about the country clergyman and ten children, five of whom this fragile elder daughter is educating. No wonder that her dresses are shabby and darned, and she feels she must succeed in her art. Does not the future of Jack, and Nellie, and Grace, and
Bertie, and others yet in the nursery depend upon her?

  "It is so good of God," says May, simply, retreating a few paces in her studio to observe the effect of her latest touches, "to have helped me to win that scholarship. I am able to go on with my studies at such a small expense; and now what I earn is free for father and the children."

  "How did He help you?" asks Amaranth, bluntly. "You won it by your own hard work."

  "Why, Amaranth," says May, opening her grey eyes in surprise, "but I should have broken down long ago but for Him. I never paint a picture, I never give one of my lectures, but I ask the Lord anew to help me. Every year I live shows me more and more that of myself I simply cannot succeed. And He knows how I need to succeed, because there isn't a care at home but He understands it. Isn't it good to feel that, Amaranth? When I was quite little, Father and Mother used to tell me there is no worry too little for God to understand and care about; and, oh, I don't know how I could live but for believing that day by day."

  "But, May, how did He help you as to the scholarship? You know you had to pass an exam."

  "Yes, Amaranth, and how I prayed He would help me through that! I worked as hard as I could, but felt so hot and nervous on the day until I remembered I had put my fate utterly into the hands of God, and I had only to do the little I could do, and leave the rest to Him! There was one question in the geometrical paper that puzzled me dreadfully. The room was full of people, but I asked God in my heart to help me; and, Amaranth, I was able to work it out."

  "Why, of course, when you went at it in the right way. You surely don't suppose He whom you call the Maker of heaven and earth would show anybody how to do a geometrical paper!"

  "But I could not see the right way at first," says May, simply. "I don't know how He helped me, but I could see the answer clearly where before I'd been puzzled. I can only tell you the fact. I can only tell you, too, that I know my God is a prayer-hearing God. Oh, Amaranth, why do you harden your heart towards Him?"

  "If there is a God, May," says Amaranth, determined not to hold her friendship under false colours, "it is He who has hardened my heart. I was a happy, trustful girl before my earthly father deceived us all and shadowed our name. I don't know what good it can do to God to have brought this darkness upon us. But at least, if He exists, He knows I have enough to think about now, in earning our daily bread, without wasting time in superstitious speculations."

  "Amaranth, may it not waste time, too, to read the book on your table, just by Eddie's Bible."

  "I bought it cheap at a stall. It is narrow-minded not to see both sides," says Amaranth, curtly. "Eddie can only read short words. You need not fear for him. I was never good enough for your friendship, May. Go your own way, which of course will lead to heaven, and leave me to the doubts which are growing thicker and thicker, and to the outer darkness."

  For one moment May hesitates. She remembers the warning against fellowship with the unbelievers, and she wonders what her parents would say to her knowing Amaranth. But the lonely, miserable look in Amaranth's eyes goes to her heart. She takes the cold hands in her own, and says, "We have begun to love each other, Amaranth; and even that love is of God. My God won't leave you in outer darkness. You don't know Him yet, Amaranth, or you never would believe He could."

  Chapter 6

  A Bryantwood Visitor

  It is sometimes said that those who live daily with an invalid are not conscious of change like outsiders, who only see the sick one at intervals. But Amaranth realises, as others do not, that the blue veins upon her brother's brow are showing more clearly now, that his chest seems thin and shrunken, and that he does not often care to drag his little limbs across the floor, as when they first came to Alexandrina Terrace.

  There are many children surrounding Mr. and Mrs. William Banks, and these come up in turn to admire the white mice and the jackdaw, and play cat's-cradle with Eddie, and relate to him, with some play of imagination, their achievements as to events at school. Eddie is aware that he is backward, and listens with admiration to Master Banks' familiarity with the multiplication table, and the daring manner in which he makes nothing of the words that in the "Early Reader" always seem pitfalls to Eddie.

  In return he paints animals and dolls for the young Bankses, and mends their toys, and sits patiently hour by hour in the big chair by the window, finding great interest and excitement in shouting "Hello!" at intervals to Amaranth, or May Burr, or a young Banks returning from the fields of knowledge.

  "If Mother only knew," thinks Amaranth, feeling with a daily pang of blank, cold dread, how light her brother is in her arms. "If Mother only knew, she would come back to us. She couldn't keep from our Eddie, even if she has forgotten me." And then she cries out in her heart, "No, Mother, it is wronging your love to think you can forget. Something -- I know not what -- is the cause of this terrible silence, this long delay. But this I know -- my mother cannot change: she cannot forget."

  Would that the girl had half as much faith in the Lord Jesus whose love is more than a mother's! But how can she trust Him when she coldly, despairingly refuses to acquaint herself with Him, the knowledge of whom is peace?

  As time goes on, she brings herself to take Eddie to a hospital, and the doctor prescribes for him a tonic, and counsels that he be rubbed with oil, and take plenty of nourishing diet, and if possible go to the sea. Eddie submits to be oily, and obediently swallows beef tea and custards, but looks so imploringly at Amaranth, and beseeches so tearfully to stay with "Sis" when Mrs. Banks hints at a juvenile boarding house at the seaside, that Amaranth ceases to puzzle herself over the problem of how she can give him sea air, and clasps him in her arms, and promises that nothing shall part them.

  All this time she is steadily working at a picture she intends to submit for exhibition. She began it in one of her saddest moods, intending to represent a study in clouds. All is dark and lowering overhead, and the shadows hang round the forest trees that she remembers so well around Bryantwood. Everything heralds a storm, and looks, to speak the truth, remarkably depressing and melancholy, though May Burr declares the painting is wonderfully clever, and seems impressed alike by trees and sky.

  One day, when Amaranth comes home from her teaching, little Eddie is smiling so brightly and looking so lovely in his gladness over a bunch of flowers Master Banks has brought him from a school treat, that Amaranth cannot forbear sketching in his face, and now, in the midst of the lowering elements in the painting, there stands a little child with smiling eyes and peaceful lips, his hands full of forget-me-nots.

  "What does it mean?" asks May Burr, gazing at her friend's picture. "There's something symbolic about this, Amaranth. What do you intend to call it?"

  "Indeed," is the answer, "I neither see nor intend anything symbolic, May. I shall simply call it Forest Moor, which is the name of the spot I have painted from memory."

  "You might call it Hope or Faith,'" says May, looking down into the eyes so like those of young Eddie nestling against the chair cushion. "But I think it is perhaps as helpful to suggest ideas as to bestow them. Amaranth, your picture is as good as a sermon. Will you let me bring some of our fellow-students in to see it next Saturday? They all believe in you, Amaranth, for the teachers at the School of Art have dropped a good many hints as to your genius."

  "Very well, bring whom you choose," says Amaranth, touching the sunny hair of the pictured child with a loving hand.

  A few months ago such an artistic success as this, the sense of power and of genuine progress, even the knowledge of something accomplished beyond the fitful, careless work of yore, would have rejoiced her heart with dreams of greatness and fame; but what is fame to her now? What can bring her rest, who has lost parents and the nearest, dearest of all, and who sees the little child she loves slipping past her into the void, the nothingness, which is all she holds the unseen world to be?

  She remembers a poem she once read, where a bird is praised for its gloriously moving music, yet all it cries over and over again i
n varying strains is, "The nest is bare." The bird thinks nothing of the homage offered to its powers; that bare, empty nest has broken its heart.

  "You will live to be famous, Amaranth," says May, softly. "Your powers are far higher than mine. All the success I've won, and must win, for the children' sake, has been hard, tireless work. But, Amaranth, you have genius. It tells in every stroke of your brush."

  "And what if I have?" says Amaranth, bitterly. "Can genius make me happy? Can it give me back the past?"

  "Oh, Amaranth," cries her friend, earnestly, "do not underrate the gift of genius. It is Heaven's gift, and never meant only to be prized as it benefits self. You say you've ceased to believe in God, though I doubt it, Amaranth, while you listen as you do to your little brother's prayers. But even if you have, do you care nothing for your fellow-creatures? Is it nothing to you that you can help and bless them, and lift them up by this great power you feel within you?"

  "May, that is something to live for," agrees Amaranth. "How selfish I've been! My thoughts are always hovering around my own misfortunes, and life has seemed so long, so blank, so empty ... especially if ... if ... Eddie does not get stronger. But I will try to come right out of self, as you do, May. If my pictures can help other people a little, there will be some use in living, after all."

  "I heard a minister say once," says May, "it is only when self dies we begin to live." And she looks fondly at Amaranth, her one thought being, "Along the road of loving her fellow men, she will reach the love of God."

  On the Saturday afternoon Eddie is greatly excited over the arrival of various young ladies, many of them quite charming in his eyes, and all linguistically gifted. Several of the men from the neighbouring studios have heard wonders from Mrs. Banks concerning her young protégée's picture, and have announced their curiosity. But Mrs. Banks is the most careful of dowagers, and is continually impressing upon Amaranth that "those painters are a wild lot;" though in this case her precautions are wasted, for Amaranth has not the least particle of girlish interest in her neighbours beyond their peculiarities as to colour mixing and other artistic details.